Election Day pace slow, at best…

Doyle Beilstein — the presiding election judge for precincts 2131, 2137 and 2138 — was at Ridgeview Elementary at 6 a.m. today to prepare for a long day of voting, not that there’s much of it going on.

Turnout has been abysmal.

Between 7 a.m., when the polls opened, and 1:30 p.m., 30 voters had cast ballots on 11 propositions aimed at amending the Texas Constitution. That’s a bit more than four voters and hour. The total number of registered voters in those three precincts is 1,933.

“My goal is to pass the early vote,” he said. “Hey, I’ve got five more hours.”

If the pace holds up, he might get there. After all, he only needed 23 more.

During early voting, Beilstein said, 2.7 percent of the voters in his precincts turned out. “And we’re not even near that today.”

Beilstein, who has worked the polls for 12 years, said he can’t recall such a slow day with lower voter turnout. He attributes it to the ballot — in his precincts — lacking any election between candidates.

But the pace at other polling places that do have contested elections doesn’t seem to be any quicker. When I stopped to vote at what should have been my polling location had I updated my address on my voter registration card, the poll workers were mesmerized by my new-fangled Texas drivers license.

There was a discussion about how the state changed the location and order of the first, middle and last names. And then there was talk about how the date of birth field had apparently changed, too. All three poll workers took a good, hard look at it — front and back — before returning it to me with their apologies. I’d have to go to my old polling place to vote.

Back at Ridgeview, Beilstein said one of the four electronic voting machines wouldn’t start this morning. The technician said just to shut it down, Beilstein noted. It hadn’t been a problem at all. Not once had the three remaining machines been in use at the same time. Technical glitches continued.

In the early afternoon, a voter needed an audio ballot but got a Spanish-language ballot instead. Crisis averted — the voter’s wife was able to read the English ballot to him, Beilstein said.

Most of the time, Beilstein and the other poll workers didn’t have voters to help. So they did “a lot of reading and eating,” he said. Crossword puzzles and word searches help kill time, too, Beilstein said.